Netflix Documentary Review: The Cuba Libre Story

The Cuba Libre Story is an eight episode documentary series on Netflix.  The documentary does not focus just on Castro, but the whole history of Cuba, from when the Spanish explorers first found the place in the 1600's to the current day.  Which is a good thing, because all we ever hear about is Castro when we talk about Cuba.  It was interesting to know what events led up to him becoming the dictator of Cuba.  You also get to see how big of an asshole Castro was.  Honestly he had no idea what he was doing, but at the same time he was a dictator so he never listened to anyone else (captain obvious here). He bascially became a communist because he needed Russian support to keep his crazy idea of communism alive. Then when the Soviet Union fell, he just became boys with Hugo Chavez to keep their crazy communist idea alive. At the very least, their is a small amount of redemption when you get to watch the sonofabitch trip and fall.  Score one for capitalism here!


You also learn about Che Guevarra, who frankly I didnt know much about at all, he basically was Castros's vice president and then when Che disagreed with Castro about this relatons with Russia, Castro cast him  aside.  I dont get why left wing nut jobs love Che so much.  Clearly not a great guy.  This whole communism thing wasnt a good idea.  I'll always remember the guys from Rage against the Machine wearing this shirt and me as a 13 year old kid saying "who's that guy?" well 24 years later I know. Clearly a communist loser, but still he had great hair. Gotta give him that.

Anyway back to the documentary.  There are a lot of people from different parts of the world as experts in this documentary. So it is basically all subtitiles all the time and the other foriegn languages are not just Spanish. It's Spanish, French and German. That gets a little annoying, but all in all you learn a lot and you get to see how YUGE of an asshole Castro was.  Hopefully America is doing the right thing in the future by re-opening relations with Cuba. I think I will be more optimistic once Raul Castro is finally dead. Then again if the Cubans ever get ahold of a $1 Trillion dollar bill communism on the island will never go away.


Grade: B-